Why Flesh and Bone Is the Darkest Show From a Woman's Point of View Yet

I know exactly when I maxed out on super-dark TV: It was last season on Game of Thrones, when (spoiler alert) angelic little Princess Shireen was burned at the stake. I literally had to leave the room. It had been a long season of watching people—women especially—take horrific, creative abuse on shows like Thrones and Outlander. But at the Shireen scene, I finally cracked, and put myself on a months-long diet of nothing but TV Land and ABC Family (The lighthearted Younger cures all.) I swore I was off the hard stuff for good.

Then came Flesh and Bone, the limited-run ballet drama premiering on Starz November 8. It's about a gifted ballerina with a past full of pain, and it might be the most disturbing show I've ever watched. But I can't get enough. Bone has made me realize I've simply been waiting for a twisted story told by a woman, about women taking charge of their destiny and owning the grisliness that goes down along the way.

The women I'd been waiting for are Bone's Moira Walley-Beckett, the Emmy-winning writer and producer who spun a lot of the story lines on Breaking Bad, and her protagonist, Claire, played by American ballerina Sarah Hay, who's something of a reverse Walter White. "[On Breaking Bad] Walter was this beige person who became extraordinary and almost reprehensible," Walley-Beckett says. Claire's goal is to become normal despite a life full of obstacles. Big obstacles. Says Hay: "At the end of every day of shooting, I'd push a hot towel over my face and say, 'Let it go. She's not you.'"

Bone crystallizes the most merciless aspects of being a ballerina, which also happen to be the most insidious aspects of being a woman. There's girl-on-girl competition, pressure to sexually charm company benefactors, and enough body insecurity to turn your stomach. "When I talk about leaving dance," says Walley-Beckett, herself a former ballerina, "I say I'm in recovery….I carried a lot with me and finally left [the quest for perfection] on the side of the road."

But there's more. Think Homeland's tough deaths or Grey's gory accidents are rough to watch? Rape on The Americans and Scandal? None of it pushes boundaries as far as Bone does. Claire's main story line revolves around a sinister bond with her brother, who may have molested her, or it might have been consensual—we're not sure yet. It's one thing to write sibling sexual contact into a show set in medieval times, like Thrones. It's quite another to put it at the center of a series set in 2015. But Walley-Beckett never balked. "I knew the story I wanted to tell," she says. As for Hay? "I thought I'd be more scared of what people thought," she says about the show's heavy themes. "But I feel empowered playing Claire. It's like I'm expressing every secret I've ever [heard]." That's the thing about darkness done right. It doesn't just shock—it sets you free.